Amazon To Buy Whole Foods

By early 2017, only 4.2 percent of regular Amazon shoppers used its grocery home delivery service. If you're into running numbers, that means Amazon essentially got Whole Foods for free after you calculate the market capitalization, which comes out to around $15.6 billion on Friday.

Amazon shares were up 3.2 percent at $995.18, while Whole Foods surged 27 percent to $41.95. Target and Aldi have also been introducing more discounts to compete with chains such as Wal-Mart, which are known for low prices. The investment firm Jana Partners said in April that it had built up an ownership stake in Whole Foods because it saw ways to address its "chronic underperformance for shareholders". Amazon has become one of the Lehigh Valley's largest employers since it opened a warehouse complex in Breinigsville in 2010. The app would then have automatically charged whatever products they took out of the store with them to their Amazon account.

Amazon is buying Whole Foods for close to $13.7 billion, effectively merging two of the highest ranked companies by Fortune for being most admirable. However, Whole Foods does not have access to Instacart's financial numbers and analytics. In an email to customers, the company said it planned to maintain the same standards under Amazon, including bans on artificial flavors and colors.

Walmart gets 53% of its sales from food, groceries and things like household cleaning products, according to GlobalData Retail.

"No one thought about Amazon", said Phil Lempert, a food industry analyst for SupermarketGuru.

Instacart and Whole Foods did not immediately respond to request for comment. Amazon has been experimenting with bookstores and a small grocery, but this is its most ambitious move into physical retail. The Seattle-based company was recently granted a patent for technology that would block shoppers from comparing prices from their mobile devices while they're in stores.

Founded in 1978, Whole Foods now has 91,000 employees and 431 supermarkets across the world, including 13 locations in Canada - mainly throughout Ontario and British Columbia.

The fund, named after a canyon in the Clark Fork River in Missoula, Mont., was started in 2011, although Mr. Piazza had been buying Whole Foodsstock since 2006.